Building Sustainability into Services Marketing: Expanding Decision-Making from a Mix to a Matrix

Alan Pomering and Lester W. Johnson
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Alan Pomering: School of Management, Operations and Marketing, Faculty of Business, University of Wollongong, Northfields Ave, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
Lester W. Johnson: Department of Management and Marketing, Swinburne University of Technology, John St, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 9, 1-12

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to develop a framework that will provide the services marketing manager a systematic, holistic and transparent means of enhancing sustainability performance through the marketing function. We review the literature dealing with the confluence of services marketing and sustainability, identify gaps in current sustainability-services marketing literature and inductively develop a conceptual framework for Sustainability Services Marketing (SSM). We describe services marketing practice examples in order to uncover the implications of a sustainability focus for services marketing and illustrate how to operationalise the framework. The resulting framework, (i) ensures that sustainability is incorporated into the strategic services marketing planning process, (ii) adapts and expands the traditional concept of the services marketing mix, by adding Partnerships to the traditional mix elements, and (iii) cross-references services marketing mix decision-making with the triple bottom line to describe the marketing task in terms of a matrix rather than a mix. This permits sustainability benchmarking and planning across the triple bottom line, and across the range of activities the services marketing manager might be expected to manage in order to enhance sustainability performance. We shift services marketing management attention to a broader and more sustainability-responsible whole-of-business approach. This research provides timely and effective guidance for the services marketing manager seeking to enhance his or her business’s sustainability performance in a systematic, holistic, and transparent way.

Keywords: services marketing; sustainability; triple bottom line; partnerships (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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